ColinBollocks

2 hours ago, Egg Shen said:

 

@David

You forgot.

Echo the praise for your opening post, David.

Another way of looking at this is 48-50% of NFL, MLB and NBA revenue goes towards paying their players, while UFC (with their reported $900M revenue) pay their fighters just 15-16%. I appreciate the three sports I mentioned have significantly higher revenues but that doesn't mean, in the future when all is well (more on that), there can be at least some wiggle room. They were also rumored to be paying $300M in dividends to their investors this year ($150M going to Endeavour) before the pandemic, while the fighters scrap it out for their shared $150M pot. Can they afford to pay the fighters more, Clive? Yes. Will they? Probably not. I think David's point that it's the lower ranked fighters that are getting shafted most is good.

Something is definitely happening behind the scenes, now that Conor has (once again) called it quits. It was reported last month Endeavour had to cut a lot of staff or cut their wages by 50%. The company are also looking to raise $250M to off-set the losses they've felt since show business has been put on hold for a few months. NYP reckon they were relying on and budgeted for that $150M pay out but it got cancelled due to the uncertainty of UFC's future. With that in mind, it makes a little more sense that UFC are penny pinching more than ever. Dana boasted on the Hearn podcast that none of his fighters are receiving pay cuts, but David's post shows how hidden that sort of thing is. I wouldn't be surprised if show money is still the same but all those hidden bonuses, which make the difference, are being squeezed.

25 minutes ago, David said:

The problem is, Dana's one of those types who if you push against him, you'll pay for it. He doesn't respond well to people trying to strong-arm him. As far as going public, he'll just whitewash the fighters concerns with his usual bluster about how fighters who want to make more money have to earn it by winning fights and selling PPV's and so on.

We're seeing it play out with Jones etc. Sadly that's a price some fighters will probably have to pay. Dana isn't going to just give fighters a much bigger share of what UFC bring in off his own back. Sitting back and not doing anything has led to fighters getting shafted out of a cut of this big telly deal.

Going back to the previous post, UFC don't have to though because it's a monopoly. Realistically, fighters are buggered and that will only change when UFC are almost forced to give up a larger chunk of their revenue.

In truth, ever since they got into bed with ESPN all the fighters are dispensable. Obviously you'd rather keep proven difference makers like Conor or Jones, but UFC are very clearly wary of not giving too much because they don't have to (as you mentioned, the joys of a monopoly) and they'll not want to break their pay structure. The reason the current owners were so excited by the company, despite the high cost of the buyout, was they pay very little of their revenue towards fighters. They obviously looked at that and also saw the huge growth in the TV money for live sports and realised it's a very profitable business. They'll run it like a business and not a sport.

Regardless, it's important the fighters try and push against the current pay structure. We all know Dana is proper sensitive when the issue of fighters pay comes up, so making it public means it's a constant sore point for him.

Something is definitely brewing here. Cejudo retired at his peak because his new contract offer was well below what he was after, Jones is not fighting for a while, Ngannou is pisses off and now this. I wonder if this is just fighters growing a set or they've got word the money may not be what it was?

Regardless, I'm delighted fighters are starting to publicly shit on UFC as they know they're worth a lot more than what they get paid. 

8 hours ago, Loki said:

It's all very well throwing "Black Lives Matter" onto your social media platform, but they need to explicitly go after the instigators of this, and that means Trump.  Otherwise it's just showboating.

Nike gets a pass as they've been bankrolling Kaepernick since he lost his job.

Indeed. Throwing up a # means nowt, realistically, if these people of some influences are doing so and not following it up by using their considerable resources and influence for change. It's jumping on a bandwagon because you don't want to be labelled racist. It's the very least they can do.

I saw Ariel Helwani post a video of the likes of Tyson, Cejudo, Vitor etc making their entrance and it genuinely got me excited. Sadly, I then watch a second clip of Tyson squaring up to Jericho and that excitement fizzled to nowt. It just wasn't any good. I don't mind wee nods back to previous incidents involving performers, but this just wasn't up to much. This sort of angle, with someone like Tyson, 100% needs the audience to make it feel like a big deal, particularly as they're nodding quite heavily to one of the all-time great angles of the past (no not Jericho taking a worked punch on some random Raw). Without the crowd there it was always going to feel like a desperate rehash. A rare misfire from Jericho.

If they insist on using Tyson they should just show his terrifying workout videos.

I'm glad he mentioned staying off the fence. When was the last time we saw Khabib fight going backwards? His game plan is usually to pressure you against the fence then he goes to work. Khabib is nowhere near as effective getting a takedown when he has to shoot for one in the middle of the octagon.

We've seen in the past that Gaethje is the type of nutter that will take a few shots or ten to land his one or two back. With Khabib I think gaining control of the octagon is as important as anything to stopping the takedown. "Feetwork" indeed.

16 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

They're certainly a good way to prolong the career for a bit, but surely he's retiring in front of an audience.

Yeah, but if he's going to have many more almost all of them should be protected with production and cuts. They could easily do both if he was to have a retirement though. 15 minutes of him recreating Road House, 5 minutes of an actual match.

While still enough in there to hold your interest, I did find this week to be tragically 'same old', which is Undertaker feeling he's back, failing and then trying to make it right and probably failing. Obviously Goldberg is next week so that isn't changing - although it will be interesting to see how hard they throw Bill under the bus to save The Undertaker some face.

I just hope the poor bugger insists on doing these mini movies until he calls it quits.

Honestly, it's mostly due to the abundance of hacks in MMA I've read over the past few years, which has led me to turn my nose up at most content/coverage these days. If it's of similar quality to their boxing/football content then I'll definitely read a bit more.

If you can, please do. I have a sub to The Athletic but rarely check out their MMA content.

Obviously is hard to argue the point if he did or didn't take anything prior to Cejudo, as he was tested and nowt came back. He very well maybe didn't.

Yeah. My point isn't really about that argument, rather on the subject of the rise of EPO and these cardio beasts (we all know who they are). I don't know how long TJ has been on the stuff, but we saw with Cejudo that it doesn't mean you automatically get a win for using it. However, I'd be surprised if it was just a one off.

Sorry if this point has already been made, but I've always been proper suspicious of the rise of all these cardio freaks popping up over the past 5 years or so, particularly when EPO was exposed as in the mix. I'm sure not everyone is on some gear, but MMA has a long past of the fighters taking all sorts to gain an edge, so it would be foolish to not be suspicious. 

I too can translate English into English.

Patrice O'Neal was incredible. Him riffing on Fight Club being so white is good too.

From the UFC POV, I'd be holding off of Jones v Ngannou until you can secure a gate. I'm sure that plays a part in them not willing to offer a rise in pay.

If I was Jones and Ngannou I'd be working hard on social media to get the fans to pester Dana into making it.

Big Show always seems sound. I think the biggest criticism of him is that he was a lazy fat shite but on the wrestler scale that's nothing.

I thought Vice did a tremendous job letting Martha and her kids say their bit. I suspected it was going for the throat when WWE and their lawyer released that shitty statement a few days ago.

I guess one of the more heartbreaking subplots out of this is a chunk of the Hart family actively being mental and siding against Martha and, effectively, her kids and their brother; if ever you needed a pure example of what sort of pond life inhabits wrestling, then this is it. Anyone got the dirt on the names that were trying to hurt Martha? ( @IANdrewDiceClay is usually the source for Hart family dirt).

It was hard to swallow then and even more so now, but Vince giving it "the human being comes first" on The Undertaker docuseries should forever be sneered at. A thin skinned weirdo with the moral compass of Tom Norman.

I agree there is a lot more meat on the bone for this, so could have easily made it a two part and went into greater detail, as grim as it will be.

Again, it's FREE. The only difference is instead of going to little old friendly YouTube, you stream it from the evil corporate behemoth that is Spotify. He's not asking you to shag your Mum in the arse while your Dad wanks the dog off in the corner.

2 minutes ago, David said:

We'll see how it plays out, but I don't see any company paying that kind of dough for something fans can get for nothing on YouTube. The idea will be to drive a good chunk of that massive traffic that Rogan gets over to Spotify.

Yeah. Full episodes are exclusive to Spotify at the end of the year. Rogan said they'll still upload small clips on YouTube but full episodes and the majority of the content will only be available via Spotify.

Rogan said his shows are going to be available for free but it's just an exclusive deal he's signed. I presume Spotify will be throwing ads all over them if you're not paying them the money.

It's funny because I've heard Rogan shit on Spotify and their business model in the past - he scoffed at their offers to host his podcast. Obviously 100M changes all that.

11 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said:

Absoutely ridiculous that this film is 52 years old and still looks better than almost anything else made since. Also ridiculous that I didn't like it at all when I first saw it. Have to see this on a big screen someday.

 

While I've always liked it, I found a whole new appreciation for it when I watched it in the cinema a couple of years ago. I often thought on the big screen the effects would look less awe-inspiring and you'd maybe see more holes in how they got it all to work but there is none of that - instead it's more impressive. It just doesn't really make sense something so old about sci-fi can still look so great, comparatively. I can only imagine how incredible it must have been seeing it for the first time back when it was released, before people started to pinch everything from it.

I've never been the biggest fan of all the lightshow near the end but it's so much more immersive at the cinema. Hypnotic, almost.

DC said on his show with Helwani that he feels he was finding it so easy against Stipe early doors that he lost respect for him, which meant he completely ditched his wrestlefuck game plan and decided he could knock him out again. Not sure I 100% buy that, but DC definitely seemed to ignore his coaches and the early game plan the more the fight went on. That's not Stipe's fault though, he started to make adjustments and found a massive hole (DC's belly button) in the stand up.

Outside of Jones moving up, DC/Stipe 3 and Stipe/Ngannou 2 are the fights at HW that makes the cock get a little fatter.